Wall St gains on trade talk hopes

US stocks rose on Friday, led by technology companies, as a report on progress in US-China trade talks lifted sentiment, pushing the S&P 500 to its best week since November.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency said Washington and Beijing were making substantive progress on trade talks, providing relief after news that a summit to seal a deal between the two sides would not happen at March-end.

Chipmakers, which tend to derive a large portion of their revenue from China, rose. The Philadelphia SE chip index climbed 2.9 per cent while the S&P 500 technology index rose 1.2 per cent.

Despite the mixed news recently on the trade front, many investors expect a deal will eventually happen, said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago.

In addition, he said, "Investors are warming up to the idea that central banks have taken a huge step backward in terms of tightening."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 138.93 points, or 0.54 per cent, to 25,848.87, the S&P 500 gained 14 points, or 0.50 per cent, to 2,822.48 and the Nasdaq Composite added 57.62 points, or 0.76 per cent, to 7,688.53.

The S&P 500 posted its best weekly gain since the end of November and Nasdaq had its best weekly gain so far this year. For the week, the S&P 500 was up 2.9 per cent, the Nasdaq was up 3.8 per cent, and the Dow was up 1.6 per cent.

US data showed manufacturing output fell for a second straight month in February and factory activity in New York state was weaker than expected this month.

That followed a batch of weak data this week that lent support to the Federal Reserve's dovish stance on future interest rate hikes, which has helped to lift stocks this year.

Boeing closed up 1.5 per cent, lifting the Dow, after the world's largest planemaker said a software upgrade for the 737 MAX aircraft will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

Even so, Boeing's shares lost 10.3 per cent for the week. The company's 737 MAX jets were grounded globally following a fatal crash involving one of its planes in Ethiopia on Sunday.

Broadcom jumped 8.2 per cent and was among the biggest boosts to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, after the company late on Thursday reported a quarterly profit that beat analysts' estimates.

Facebook shares were down 2.5 per cent after the social media giant said late on Thursday that Chief Product Officer Chris Cox would be leaving the company.

The stock briefly added to losses and Google-parent Alphabet lost ground after the Washington Post reported that US state attorneys general are signalling they are willing to take action against those and other companies.

Qualcomm shares climbed 2.2 per cent after it won a legal victory against Apple, with a jury in federal court in San Diego finding that Apple owes Qualcomm about $US31 million for infringing three of its patents.

Volume on US exchanges was 10.8 billion shares, compared to the 7.5 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.